The invisibility of infertility is part of my normal. As I have written, I never expected to feel invisible during my own community’s awareness week though. Couple that with this piece by Lisa over at Life Without Baby and reading Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos’s latest e-book Finally Heard (which I HIGHLY recommend) and it all has me thinking and feeling quite a bit.
Is the infertility community no longer my tribe?
Do I no longer belong there?
When I think about some of the people I am closest too in the community, even they may not fit in our tribe much longer as many of them are pregnant after their infertility struggles (which is technically what we all want as our get out of this tribe ticket). They may actually get shoved out of the tribe which doesn’t feel all that different than not be acknowledged.
Am I holding onto something that doesn’t even want me any longer?
I get it, some really struggle with my story. My story does not include successful treatments and ends without children. I think it is safe to assume my story makes our community sad and scared.
Why am I holding on?
I’m not ready. Especially as a therapist working with people in the throes of the infertility journey, I am not ready to be left behind yet. Or, is it that I am not ready to move on yet?
But more than that, I’m not done. My advocacy and impact hasn’t yet been felt enough for me to walk away without regret.
Do I care too much?
Is change even possible?
I want more. I want more as a survivor of the infertility journey. And, I want more for those still fighting the battle because I see the devastation on a daily basis in my private practice.
I simply want more, and as an advocate I will fight until I get it.
I want us to demand more from our infertility clinics; to be more than just their paychecks, to demand more mental health support and actual resources and to demand acknowledgment that sometimes we must stop treatments to save ourselves.
I want us to demand more from our culture; to help others understand that making a family is not always simple and hardly easy for many of us, to demand more fertility compassion and to practice more empathy than sympathy with one another.
I want us to demand more for and from ourselves; I want more than what we are giving ourselves permission for in the infertility journey. I want us to be more than our quest to become parents. I want us to trust that sometimes never giving up is the actually unhealthiest thing we are doing; we must practice hope balanced with active acceptance. I want us to know that we can write our own happy ending and it doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s.
I want to help instill these messages into my infertility community for many reasons.
- Because I am a helper. I am most myself when educating, helping and practicing my spiritual gift of mercy.
- Because I think these permissions could actually help our treatments be more successful and in the least help us not be completely destroyed by the journey.
- Because I want us all to have the glory of being the happy, healthiest and most engaged versions of ourselves in this life.
And so, I want us to define our new tribe.
One that supports one another through empathy and trusts that there is room for all of us to belong. That if we are actually in this together we can change the unhealthy messages that surround infertility, pregnancy loss and recovery. And even though we may be in completely different places along the journey, we all can identify with what lies underneath this battle; the lifelong losses of what we had dreamed about and hoped for.
I am not ready to walk away from my infertility tribe but I also know and feel that it is not the healthiest place for me any longer. And sure, maybe I am simply in denial of my limbo land but I don’t think so. I think we all need this new tribe, we need these messages to change and we need to fight for ourselves; to rise ever upward.
Who’s with me?
